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A7: Environmental Survival Skills: Tundra

Cold.  Undeniably the only thing Razor could think about as the wind blasted up the landing ramp was the ice smashing into his face and the freezing cold.  Razor was carrying his full combat pack which contained ninety pounds of gear including his disassembled rifle. 

He looked back over his shoulder at the other students all sitting still strapped into their seats in the drop ship.  He realized that the idea of what he was about to do had wiped any ideas of a snappy quip to say to the rest of the class so instead of saying anything he snapped off a quick salute to the pilot and promptly tumbled out of the back of the ship.  He fell the last ten feet to the snow covered ground.  Normally Razor would have been more graceful, possibly even landing without breaking through the thin shell of ice that covered the top of the snow but his pack wrenched him sideways and he landed hard in the snow. 

It was freezing on the barren plane of snow as Razor looked at his chrono.  The pilot called through his comm into Razor’s head phone saying, “See you in twenty-four hours crazy.  If you survive that long.” 

Razor was on his final test for the cold environment survival class.  He had no idea why he had decided to take the class.  The paperwork had said, “Bad in cold weather? Learn How To Deal!”  The trooper had jumped on the band hover sled knowing that he always had trouble dealing with cold weather on the occasions that his squad ended up on ice missions.

So the icicle found himself wading through deep snow trying to remember the things his environmental instructor had told him about cold weather.

The list Razor had been running through in his head had been blasted out with the first rush of icy air.  His Balaclava was supposed to keep his face warmer and stop his lips from freezing in the cold.  All the gear he had been given had water pockets in it.  Even his gloves had tubes running into them to help keep his hands from getting frostbitten.  The water was partially heated by his body and partially warmed by a small heating coil on his back.  The gear supposedly had saved troopers lives before but for Razor putting water in an ice environment just seemed like a bad idea.

The instructors had repeatedly drilled the list of actions a trooper should take as soon as they landed in the cold tundra.  The ice and wind wasn't helping as he tried to remember the words that he had repeated so mindlessly. He had not realized the gravity of the things he had been saying in the class.  He should have remembered the transfer from basic into combat and seen that environment training was the same. In a rush the steps came back to his cold addled brain.

Step one was simple: find food and water.  Razor had his ration packs with him and could melt the snow into his water filter which he kept in the side pouch of his pack so it would be easily accessible.

The warrior had battled many people who opposed the Vast Empire and had battled the pains of being shot or accidentally killing innocents.  Razor was not, however, used to battling cold.  If ever there was a training event that he thought he would not make it through it would be this cold training. 

Step two was harder:  Find shelter.  Razor remembered slowly the cold making his brain as sluggish as his unresponsive hands.  He remembered his  instructor making a comparison to mole rats burrowing into the ground.  As soon as he remembered that he fell to his knees and began digging.

Razor’s face was raw from the wind that whipped across his face faster than a blaster bolt.  The ice cut little furrows across the little bit of exposed skin on his face.

Razor saw that the snow was beginning to turn red and had no idea why.  His brain could not fully form the thoughts for him to realize that he had sliced both his hands open on the solid chunks of ice that had edges sharper than glass.  Razor took hours to did a hole large enough for him to get into. 

He slid down into the bottom and began packing snow around the opening of the hole he had just made.  The instant he packed snow over the last bit of the hole he realized that it was heating up inside of the small alcove.  Razor pulled out one of his ration packs and attempted to rip off the cover.

As he did so he saw that his hands were simply not responding to the commands his brain was sending.  His blood had frozen on his hands as he had been digging but now as they defrosted the blood just began to seep out of the deep rents.  He pulled off his pack and got out two pieces of cloth which he wrapped around each of his hands to help prevent his hands from releasing too much of his blood. 

After he had warmed up for another little, while he was able to pull the top off of his ration pack.  He packed some ice into his water purifier and sat on it so his body heat would melt some of the ice.  He promptly leaned back and fell asleep.

Razor awoke with his head spinning and unable to collapse.  He attempted to move and simply slid off of the water purifier.  He panicked as he tried to struggle to his feet.  His arm flailed out simply not responding to his brains orders.  The flailing arm smashed into the wall that Razor had dug in through.  His hand smashed through the wall of snow that was keeping the cold out. 

Air.  Pure, glorious, freezing, crisp air flowed in through the hole restoring Razor’s oxygen starved mind.  He had breathed all the oxygen into carbon dioxide when he had been sleeping.  He had been slowly asphyxiating from lack of oxygen.

Razor breathed heavily for a long minute and then began to feel the other problems.  His brain, having been in an airless stupor had let him sleep into near starvation and absolute dehydration.  He pulled himself up out of his hole and sent up his beacon.  Within minutes he heard the thrum of the drop ship engines.  He climbed into the back of the ship and as the hatch closed he instantly began to feel the warmth.  His cold soiree was over.

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WC:1106

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Environmental training: Aquatic

Razor breathed in heavily as he continued to listen to the stream of instructions from his instructor.  It had taken him weeks to get to this point.  He had sat in class rooms and put on and taken off his water suit hundreds of times. He secured his buoyancy control device to the filtration tank. He stood up and placed his BCD collar strap over top of tank. The valve opening of the tank faced the BCD. He secured the BCD and tank by taking the large BCD straps and pulling them tightly around the tank which he secured with the locking mechanism. He tested that his BCD was securely attached by holding the top of the BCD and gently shaking it.

He attached his regulator hose. First, removing the plastic cap on tank valve and check the o-ring he made sure that it was free of debris. Next, he unscrewed the yoke on his regulator and removed the dust cap. With the BCD away from him and the tank in front of his body, he placed the first stage of the regulator against the valve opening and tighten until it was finger tight. Finally he attached the low pressure hose on the regulator to the low pressure inflator on the BCD. The tank attached to his back weighed heavily upon him, almost pulling him into the water.  He sat on the side of a flotilla that was hovering fifty meters above the water. 

“ You’re going to dive in.  The orienting mechanisms on your suit will show you which direction you need to swim.  You will find the break in the pipes and close it using your underwater welder.  The welder’s design is so simple even an idiot like you can use it.  Just push the button then heat the metal.  When the bubbles stop coming out the hole will be closed. Once you hit the water you’re on your own.”

Razor shook his head and sealed on his mask.  The pumps on both sides of his neck started pumping oxygen into the suit.  He clicked the wrist mounted welder on and off then, without a word to his trainer, pushed himself backwards over the edge of the flotilla.  He soared through the air, extending his arms out in front of him. 

His body torpedoed into the water, his speed shooting him deep into the murky depths. He looked left and right as his HUD sent out sonar waves telling him which direction to swim.  A marker popped up on his display goggles.  He turned left fishtailing with his feet and propelling himself forward in the water.  The display said he was only one hundred meters away from the hole in the pipe.  He finned outward pushing with his feet.

The swimming had been practiced so hard and so often over the last two weeks that Razor’s swimming had become subconscious. His hands finned powerfully through the water. His fins attached to his feet working furiously to push him to his objective.  The suit’s two air pumps were pushing the carbon dioxide out and pull air in from the water.  The tank on his back had a processor which pulled water in and separated the oxygen from the hydrogen pushing almost pure oxygen into the suit.

The high level of oxygen allowed him to swim faster. His body functions helping him to process the oxygen worked twice as fast.

Before Razor even realized it he was coming up on the pipes that were pulling the rich oils from underneath the surface of the ocean rock.

There was a stream of black oil and air bubbles flowing out of one of the thinner feeding tubes.  Razor clicked on his welder and the deep blue flame lit up the sea around him.  The bright burning flame torched the metal instantly turning it red hot and melting the drips of metal across the open hole.  The only problem was that the  hot metal wasn’t dripping into the fully correct position. 

Razor grabbed a stone off of the sea bottom and lightly touched the side of the pipe.  He slammed the stone hard into the metal hole.  The metal instantly welded around the solid rock. The oil and all the air stopped escaping the pipe.  The rock had worked perfectly.  Razor pointed himself straight up and swam toward the surface as fast as he could.

DAMN! That was quite derpty of me.  I meant to use the word for the hover barge type of thing that Jabba had in Episode IV.  I guess I should just call it a hover barge next time.